ts by showing
people the consequences of their conduct. He calls controversy, again,
an 'intellectual warfare,' which, he adds, is far more searching and
effective than legal persecution. It roots out the weaker opinion. And
so, when speaking of the part played by coercion in religious
developments, he says that 'the sources of religion lie hid from us.
All that we know is that now and again in the course of ages someone
sets to music the tune which is haunting millions of ears. It is caught
up here and there, and repeated till the chorus is thundered out by a
body of singers able to drown all discords, and to force the unmusical
mass to listen to them.'[149] The word 'force' in the last sentence
shows the transition. Undoubtedly force in the sense of physical and
military force has had a great influence in the formation both of
religions and nations. We may say that such force is 'essential'; as a
proof of the energy and often as a condition of the durability of the
institutions. But the question remains whether it is a cause or an
effect; and whether the ultimate roots of success do not lie in that
'kind of force' which is called 'persuasion'; and to which nobody can
object. If coercion be taken to include enlightenment, persuasion,
appeals to sympathy and sentiment, and to imagination, it implies an
ultimate social groundwork very different from that generally suggested
by the word. The utilitarian and individualist point of view tends
necessarily to lay stress upon bare force acting by fear and physical
pain. The utilitarian 'sanctions' of law must be the hangman and the
gaoler. So long as society includes unsocial elements it must apply
motives applicable to the most brutal. The hangman uses an argument
which everyone can understand. In this sense, therefore, force must be
the ultimate sanction, though it is equally true that to get the force
you must appeal to motives very different from those wielded by the
executioner. The application of this analogy of criminal law to
questions of morality and religion affects the final conclusions of the
book.

Fitzjames's whole position, if I have rightly interpreted him, depends
essentially upon his moral convictions. The fault which he finds with
Mill is precisely that Mill's theory would unmoralise the state. The
state, that is, would be a mere association for mutual insurance against
injury instead of an organ of the moral sense of the community. What,
then, is morality?